A Cosmopolitan Country Bumpkin

A Phone Call

I had the loveliest phone call this afternoon from the vendor’s daughter (his hearing isn’t very good, so he doesn’t do phones any more, she said).

She just called to tell me that her father was really pleased I’m the one to buy his house, since apparently he thinks I seem like a decent enough chap. I drove over to have a walk around the outside of the garden the day after I viewed the house, just to feel sure before going in with an offer, and I ran into Poul, the vendor, and we chatted for perhaps half an hour over the fence – about his family and their time in the house, about his childhood and youth in the area, about the German occupation 1940-45 and the resistance and the surprisingly polite German soldiers.

Tomorrow he’ll be viewing an apartment in the town where his daughter lives, but it seems good on paper and he’s beginning to be excited about living in an easier place and so on. That was also lovely to hear, because he really seems like a nice guy who deserves to be happy even though he has to move from a place he has so many memories in. (The daughter was born in the house, apparently.)

I’m so flattered, though, that he is pleased that I am the buyer of his house. Not that he had any other buyers to choose from, but still. The fact that he told his daughter to call me and tell me is rather touching.

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7 Responses

I think he just saw a guy who grew up with both sets of grandparents living on farms in the country and wants to relive those childhood memories, rather than some snooty Copenhagener who’d want to demolish everything and build from scratch – which is really what most people would do with that house. (Hey, if I had a million dollars maybe I’d do that too, but I’m quite happy without a million and quite happy to just work with what’s there.)

I think it probably mattered more that I was interested in what the local history was like and what it had been like to raise a family in that house. -And that I actually stopped to chat with an old, hard-of-hearing man who probably don’t see many people in his day-to-day life.

Old people are, though, interesting, and going forward there will be fewer and fewer people like him who have spent their entire lives living within a small geographical area and thus have a deep-rooted knowledge of the local history for the past 86 years. These days we all move about so much, so I guess much local history and lore will be lost in the future.

Everything is completed, I’ve transferred the full payment and my attorney is writing up the deed, so basically nothing can go wrong with the purchase now. Many things can go wrong once I start renovating, of course, but for now everything is on track.